Cosmic Crimes

In the summer of 2018, an image of suburban normalcy shattered in Frederick, Colorado. Behind the trimmed lawns and smiling family photos, Chris Watts led a double life that spiraled into one of the most haunting domestic crimes in recent memory. When Shanann Watts and their two young daughters vanished, the search quickly turned inward, unraveling a web of lies and carefully managed appearances....

For nearly a century, the Cecil Hotel stood at the center of downtown Los Angeles, accumulating a history of death, instability, and unanswered questions. Long before it became synonymous with viral mystery, the building was marked by suicides, violent crime, and transient lives colliding in one place. In 2013, the disappearance and death of Elisa Lam brought renewed attention to the hotel, transf...

In November 1978, the remote settlement of Jonestown in Guyana became the site of one of the deadliest mass deaths in modern history. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of the Peoples Temple, had spent years cultivating loyalty, control and fear among his followers before leading more than 900 people to their deaths in a coordinated act of murder and coercion. What began as a movement built on prom...

In the early decades of the 20th century, a series of disappearances and deeply disturbing crimes slowly converged around one man hiding behind the appearance of a frail, elderly drifter. Albert Fish targeted society's most vulnerable, moving through boarding houses, neighborhoods, and families with calculated patience while leaving devastation in his wake. His arrest revealed a pattern of extreme...

In the early 2010s, investigators uncovered a serial killer whose crimes defied traditional patterns and challenged the limits of criminal profiling. Israel Keyes operated across the United States for years, carefully planning abductions, sexual assaults, and murders while leaving behind almost no forensic trail. He buried "kill kits" years in advance, selected victims at random, and avoided famil...

In the early 1970s, Houston became the setting for one of the most disturbing serial murder cases in American history. Dean Corll, known locally as the "Candy Man", used his access to teenage boys and the trust of their families to conceal a prolonged pattern of abduction, assualt, and murder. With the help of two teenage accomplices, Corll lured dozens of victims to his home and other locations,...

In the early 1970s, California was shaken by a series of abductions and murders that would later be traced to Ed Kemper, an intelligent, articulate man whose calm demeanor masked escalating violence. Kemper targeted young women he picked up while hitchhiking, committing six murders before turning his rage toward his mother and her friend in a final act that stunned investigators. When he ultimatel...

In the 1890s, Chicago's booming South Side became the backdrop for one of the most infamous criminal legends in American history. H. H. Holmes, born Herman Webster Mudgett, cultivated the persona of a polite, educated businessman while quietly engineering a web of fraud, manipulation, and murder. Though newspapers later sensationalized his so-called "Murder Castle," the truth is more unsettling. H...

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Anchorage, Alaska, was stalked by a predator hiding in plain sight. Robert Hansen, a quiet baker, devoted father, and seemingly ordinary member of the community, was secretly hunting women in the wilderness, kidnapping them, assaulting them, and releasing them into the remote woods before tracking them like game. For years, his crimes went unnoticed, protected by his...

In the 1970s, a wave of disappearances swept through the Pacific Northwest as Ted Bundy, seemingly intelligent, ambitious, and disarmingly charming, lived a double life that concealed one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. To friends and colleagues, he was a law student with political aspirations; to investigators, he became the elusive predator responsible for a multistate t...

In 2009, a Florida family gathered for what should have been a warm, ordinary Thanksgiving, until the night erupted into one of the most devastating family massacres in modern true-crime history. Paul Michael Merhige, long described as the "golden child" with a quiet brilliance and a history of untreated mental illness, arrived at his relatives' home in Jupiter with a calculated plan he had concea...

In the winter of 1957, the rural town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, was thrust into national horror when investigators stepped inside the farmhouse of Ed Gein, only to uncover a nightmarish collection of human remains turned into masks, clothing, and household décor. Gein, a reclusive handyman shaped by an obsessive devotion to his mother and a lifetime of isolation, blurred the line between grief, de...

On a December night in 1991, four teenage girls were found bound, gagged, and burned inside an Austin yogurt shop, a crime so brutal it stunned the nation. For years, police pursued a tangled investigation that led to false confessions, overturned convictions, and lingering doubt. Decades later, advances in DNA testing would upend everything, pointing not to the four accused young men, but to an u...

In September 2004, London was gripped by a wave of seemingly random violence that left four people dead and two others severely injured. The attacker, 24-year-old Daniel Gonzalez, moved through the city like a horror-film villain come to life, mask on, knives drawn, and an obsession with becoming a "famous serial killer." Diagnosed with schizophrenia years earlier, Gonzalez had cycled through psyc...

Behind the lace curtains of a modest Sacramento boarding house, Dorothea Puente cultivated the image of a kind grandmotherly caretaker. But in reality, she was orchestrating one of California's most chilling murder-for-profit schemes. Throughout the 1980s, Puente preyed on the vulnerable, elderly and disabled tenants who trusted her with their lives, while secretly cashing their benefit checks and...

Between 1978 and 1990, fear gripped the Soviet Union as one of the most prolific serial killers in history hunted in plain sight. Andrei Chikatilo, a quiet family man and schoolteacher on the surface, was hiding a horrifying secret. Over more than a decade, he murdered and mutilated at least 52 women and children, leaving behind a trail of terror that baffled authorities for years. In this episode...

On April 16, 2007, the quiet campus of Virginia Tech was shattered when Seung-Hui Cho carried out one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Armed with two handguns and a history of red flags, Cho killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself. In this episode, we walk through the haunting timeline of that day, explore the years of warning signs, from school interventions to mental h...

He looked like the all-American success story; a former football star drafted by the Green Bay Packers. But behind the athlete persona was a violent predator. Between 1979 and 1981, Randall Woodfield terrorized the Pacific Northwest, committing a spree of robberies, sexual assualts and murders along the I-5 corridor. In this episode, we trace the path from proimising young athlete to cold-blooded...

In 2016, Sherri Papini vanished while jogging near her Northern California home. For 22 days, the country searched, and when she reappeared, bruised and chained, she claimed she'd been abducted by two Hispanic women. But years later, the truth unraveled...the whole thing was staged. In this episode, we walk through the bizarre hoax that fooled the FBI, fueled a media storm, and left a community sh...

In 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted while walking to her school bus stop in broad daylight. For the next 18 years, she was hidden in a backyard compound, held captive by Phillip and Nancy Garrido, and forced to live a life no child should ever endure. In this episode, we follow the harrowing timeline of Jaycee's kidnapping, the disturbing psychological manipulation she endured, and...

In 1993, Lorena Bobbitt grabbed a kitchen knife, severed her husband's penis, and tossed it out the window of her car, and suddenly, their names were everywhere. But behind the tabloid frenzy was a brutal story of alleged abuse, control, and a woman pushed to her breaking point. In this episode, we revisit the explosive timeline, the media circus that mocked Lorena's trauma, and the courtroom chao...

In the early hours of November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students were brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus home. The case shocked the nation, and for weeks, there were no suspects, no murder weapon, and no answers. But the trail eventually led to Bryan Kohberger, a criminology PhD student with a chilling interest in the psychology of murder. In this episode, we follow the invest...

On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys unleashed unimaginable violence at Columbine High School, leaving 13 victims dead and the country in shock. But behind the trench coats and violence were two very different minds. Eric Harris, an Aries Sun with a Scorpio Rising and Cancer Moon, was volatile, vengeful, and dangerously charismatic. Dylan Klebold, born under a Virgo Sun, Pisces Rising, and Aquarius...

In 2019, 17-year-old Bianca Devins was murdered by a man she barely knew...someone who mistook access for intimacy. Brandon Andrew Clark, a man she had recently met online, became fixated on her. After a night out at a concert, he attacked and killed her in a jealous rage, then posted graphic photos of her body online. In this episode, we follow the digital breadcrumbs of obsession and entitlement...

Ivan Jerome Hill, infamously known as the 60 Freeway Killer, terrorized Southern California by targeting sex workers and marginalized women in the '90s. With an Aries Sun and a Virgo Moon, Hill's chart reveals a disturbing blend of impulsive aggression and calculated control. But it's his overwhelming number of cardinal placements that really stand out, hinting at a relentless drive to dominate, i...